together and drink, flirt, and dance with men who would cleverly suggest we were sisters. She was involved in almost all aspects of my life and when I wanted to keep some things separate, she would be hurt and/or angry. And because I craved her attention and approval (unconsciously), I did as she wanted.
I didn’t understand how unhealthy our relationship was.
Fast-forward twenty-five years, at the end of 2010, and there I was, divorcing my mother, too. Instead of a letter in the mail, I sent her an email. Despite her (our?) desire for a different, healthier mother-daughter relationship, it appeared we couldn’t escape those etched-in-stone patterns. My mother had unconsciously passed down attitudes and behaviors, I unconsciously took them, and when I wanted to strike out on my own and have a life separate from my mother, our relationship suffered.
I will tell you about some of the things that led up to that moment—the things that I believed justified “divorcing” my mother—but what’s important is to know for now is that in that moment I felt like I had no other option. I believed that divorcing my mother—choosing to have no contact with her—would solve all my problems.
Instead, I found myself obsessing about our relationship. To anyone who would listen, I’d pour out my hurt and anger, sharing the details of how my mother had done me wrong. I was operating from an unhealthy, unconscious belief that I was my mother’s victim.
When I discovered the concept of victim consciousness, it all made sense. Up until that point, I resisted the idea that I might be a victim because in my family, “being a victim” was something to be ashamed of and to avoid at all costs. I highly recommend the work of Lynne Forrest and her book Beyond Victim Consciousness for fully understanding this concept, but let me lay out the basics here.
Imagine an inverted triangle. At the bottom of the triangle is the Victim, in the top-left corner is the Persecutor, and in the top-right corner is the Rescuer (note that both these roles are in the “one up” position from the Victim).
When we’re in victim consciousness, we’re playing one of those three roles, and it’s important to recognize that none of these roles is considered better than other (especially when everyone in the dynamic is an adult). The Rescuer is not the “good guy.” In fact, the Rescuer and the Persecutor are basically exaggerated versions of the Victim.
This dynamic plays out on a micro level in families, and we can also see it playing out in the world, on a macro level.
According to Forrest: “Victims think of themselves as weak and unable to take care of themselves, so they are constantly on the lookout for someone to rescue them. Rescuers tend to believe that their own needs are irrelevant. They believe that they matter only when they are taking care of others, and that means they constantly need someone to take care of. Persecutors believe the world is a generally unsafe and fearful place. They think of themselves as being in constant need of protection from a world that is out to get them, and so they get angry at others or at situations believing that they are only defending themselves.”
No matter where you start out on the triangle, you will eventually play the other two roles. If you’re the Victim, you start to feel resentment, and may even move into the Persecutor role in order to change the pattern, believing you are protecting yourself. Or, you may move into the Rescuer role in order to feel important because you’re taking care of the Victim.
In hindsight, I see that my mother and I constantly revolved around the triangle, each of us playing all three roles.
Shortly after I “divorced” my mother, I became my maternal grandmother’s legal guardian. Given that her children lived in other states (and in one case, in another country), it made sense that I, who lived about ninety minutes away, take on this role. Not to mention, as I said earlier, the relationship between my mother and her mother was strained.
When it became obvious that she’d no longer be able to live alone in her home, I moved her into a skilled nursing facility, cleaned out her house, and sold it. It was while readying her house for sale that I found a series of letters she and my mother had written to each other, from the time my mother was eighteen and in college.
I treasured those letters because they gave me so much insight. They mirror, almost exactly, some of the correspondence my mother and I have exchanged over the years. In some cases, the letters conveyed basic day-to-day observations and news, but other letters were filled with rage, hurt, accusations, and confusion.
I even found the famous “I’m divorcing you” letter my mother sent my grandmother.
My point in sharing this is to illustrate that despite what we say, despite what we might intend, what we model is what makes the biggest impact. I’m not saying I divorced my mother because she divorced hers, nor am I saying that what either of us did during that time was right (or wrong). Dysfunctional patterns, if not noticed and acknowledged honestly, get passed on.
Although I chose not to have children, I saw the effects of those patterns in some of my other relationships, from my marriage, to my sister (same father, different mother), to my stepkids. I was harsh, critical, controlling, and downright mean sometimes. I believed I was justified. I was treating others the way my mother had treated others, the way she had treated me…and the way I had treated myself. Being “in conflict” was the norm. I was used to it.
I’m not blaming my mother, or her mother, for the patterns. What was passed down was the unconscious pain of being a woman in a culture that does not equally value women. This is the pain of “not good enough” and of harsh self-judgment, criticism, and unworthiness.
This pain has been passed down, woman to woman, mother to daughter, for centuries.
They told us “just be yourself,” but they taught us (via example) to be someone else. Conform. Standardize. Comply. Obey. And if we didn’t, we were often accused of being selfish, or being a show-off.
Think about it for a second. Centuries ago, women were burnt at the stake, stoned, and drowned (literally and metaphorically) for being their true selves, for expressing their true selves. Especially when that self was deemed to be evil, magic, wild, intuitive, inappropriate, too sexual, too thin, too fat, too much, too smart…you get the picture.
Fast-forward to the beginning of twentieth century and instead of being murdered, women were labeled as “hysterical,” thrown into institutions and locked away, told that it was for their own good.
Today? The murdering and locking away still happens, especially to women of color, but mostly it takes the form of being shamed, harassed, and threatened in the media.
It makes sense, then, that our mothers (and grandmothers and great-grandmothers), scolded us for being anything that might make us unattractive or ineligible for marriage, because for most of history women could not survive on their own.
Thus, generation after generation, women have had two universal (and often unconscious) conflicting needs: (1) I must be my true self…I must express my true self. (2) I must protect myself from being burnt at the stake, so I will squash and mold and contort myself so I “fit in” and am deemed “okay.”
So of course our mothers felt the need to protect us, while at the same time trying to model independence, while at the same time trying to protect themselves, while at the same time being pressured to “do it all”—perfectly—while at the same time, perhaps, turning to addiction or becoming mentally ill or, maybe, just being jealous and pissed off.
By itself, this generational pain is one of the most significant sources of dysfunction in our relationships. Those beliefs and patterns
